Best Albums I Missed In 2014
- My Favourite Faded Fantasy—Damien Rice
I can’t deny that My Favourite Faded Fantasy is a beautiful album. The lush arrangements with Rice’s plaintive, heart-wrenching vocals floating on top make for a transportive listening experience from beginning to end. But there’s something about this album that makes me uncomfortable these days.
I first noticed the problem, not with Damien Rice, but with Keaton Henson, who writes pretty much exclusively in the painfully vulnerable mode of the existentially lovelorn. What I noticed with Henson, and later with Rice (who, as far as I know, hasn’t built his entire career on this the way Henson has) is how…creepy it is. There’s a way in which the speakers of these songs fetishize their loneliness, a way of objectifying the person they pine for by using them to merely reflect themselves. A line from Henson’s “10am Gare du Nord” kind of sums it up: “Tire of me if you will, my love / But I will not tire of you.”
In the title track, Rice’s speaker similarly doesn’t really seem to care what the other person has to say. “You could be my favourite faded fantasy,” he sings—he’s in love with the idea of her, or rather, the idea of the idea of her. “I’ve hung my happiness on what it all could be,” he continues, and later, “I could love you more than life / If I wasn’t so afraid / of what it all could be.” You could just read this as the tension of the unknown, the excitement of the possibilities conflicting with the fear of it all going wrong, but you could also read those lines as using the phrase “what it all could be” in two different ways. In the first, the speaker is saying the he can only find happiness in the fantasy, while in the second, he’s confessing his fear of the reality.
One more example, from the chorus of “Colour Me In.” “Come let me love you,” he sings, “and then colour me in.” Again, the speaker doesn’t actually care about the other person, demanding not only that they welcome his romantic ideation but that they reflect it back on him, thus giving him an identity, “colour[ing] in” this empty shell of a person. Suffice it to say that this is not a healthy approach to romance.
At their worst, songs like these weaponize the idea of the “sensitive guy,” portraying this harmful emotional manipulation as “honesty” and “passion,” and it’s a bad model for guys who are actually trying to learn (healthy) emotional vulnerability. Guys who, say, are in college and reeling from the end of their first serious relationship in which they were also maybe a little unhealthily vulnerable. For example. The real insidious part is that the beauty of the music isn’t ameliorative, it’s part of the problem, letting the problematic lyrics hide behind a shimmering veil.
But I don’t know if I want to write this album off as just a beautiful but dark and twisted fantasy. For one thing, “The Greatest Bastard” is a legitimately good song, with the same level of pathos as the others but more honest, and with a sense of humour that isn’t found elsewhere on the album. Then there’s the final line of the album: “‘Cause love is tough / When enough is not enough.” Given that the argument of many of these songs’ speakers is essentially, “I love you therefore love me,” this at least hints at some level of self-awareness. For me, it’s not enough to convince me that my discomfort is what Rice intended. But it’s something.
- Rose EP—The Front Bottoms
Writing about EPs is difficult. They tend to be loose collections of songs rather than a crafted, thematically linked album, and they tend to sound a lot like whatever album immediately preceded them. So there’s not much you can say about them without just going song by song. And I don’t feel like doing that. These are good songs. The end.
Best Discoveries of 2015
- Adrian Crowley
- Amelia Curran
- AJJ
- Bad Bad Hats
- Dry the River
- Gabriel Kahane
- Girlpool
- Modest Mouse
- Molly Drake
- Old Wave
- PHOX
- The Rural Alberta Advantage
- SOAK
- SPORTS
- The Staves
- Torres
Best Albums of 2015
- Back on Top—The Front Bottoms
Though the book hasn’t been closed on them quite yet, it’s hard not to look back on Back on Top (top) as The Front Bottoms’ last great album. The irony is how much of what defines the subpar Going Grey was codified on this album: the more standard rock production, the catchy choruses, the inexplicable steel drums. But where Going Grey is stale, repetitive, and inexplicably filled with steel drums, Back on Top is fresh, dynamic, and surprising (due in part to the inexplicable steel drums). The main difference between the two albums is that these songs have more than 1.5 verses and don’t just repeat the chorus for 2/3rds of the song. The Front Bottoms have always succeeded on their verbosity, and too many songs on Going Grey just repeat the most boring part over and over. This album is a much better balance between catchy and lyrically dense.
- Carrie & Lowell—Sufjan Stevens
Breakup albums are a dime a dozen, but mourning albums are rarer—rarer still those that deal with such a complex relationship as Stevens had with his late mother, and the fact that Stevens pulls off such a nuanced representation, never straying into stock sentimentality or off-putting vitriol, is an impressive achievement just from a lyrical perspective. Musically, it’s an achingly beautiful work of art that never fails to give me goosebumps.
- Dark Bird Is Home—The Tallest Man On Earth
To quote David Sedaris: “It’s best not to think about it that hard.” Kristian Matsson (height: 5’7″) doesn’t necessarily always excel in the lyrical department, but he’s always been good at emotion, especially once he started expanding his sonic palette and writing more complex music (including one of my favorite piano riffs of all time, above). I haven’t played this album in a while, but that’s less about it not holding up (I think it does) and more about me playing it over and over and over and over for a year after it came out. Music like this is hard to get sick of, if you approach it on its own terms.
- Gold Shadow—Asaf Avidan
Asaf Avidan has fallen out of my rotation over the years. Although some of my favorite songs of his (“Over My Head,” “Let’s Just Call It Fate,” “Left Behind”) are in my own repertoire, those are also the songs that, frankly, I would prefer to hear someone else sing. The songs that best fit his voice, like “Gold Shadow,” while not necessarily worse songs, are the kinds of songs for which you have to be in a specific mood; if they come up on shuffle, odds are you’re gonna skip them. Still, there’s real artistry on display here.
- Jackrabbit—San Fermin
Sit back, ’cause it’s story time. I first heard San Fermin on NPR’s All Songs Considered. They sounded interesting, so I listened to the album (their self-titled debut)…and it didn’t really click. A while later, they did a Tiny Desk Concert. I watched it, completely forgetting that I’d already decided I didn’t like the album, enjoyed the Tiny Desk Concert, checked out the album again…and this time I liked it. (Side note: This was the beginning of my paranoia about liking things just because I’ve heard them multiples times, a fear which haunts me to this day.)
What I figured out, though, is that I liked the female lead vocalist they were touring with, Rae Cassidy, better than the female leads on the album (Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius). She just had more personality to her vocals, more emotional investment. So I started following the band’s live performances on YouTube, and watched as they got tighter as a band, and as Cassidy became a truly impressive performer, specializing in emotive belting and epic falsetto riffs.
Then the band started their European tour, and suddenly there was a new female lead, Charlene Kaye. And, to be frank, she was not doing well. She just couldn’t hit the notes that Cassidy could, and seemed to be trying to make up for it by putting on an unconvincing rocker attitude that just seemed forced and awkward. What made it even worse is that San Fermin had started doing a couple new songs back when Cassidy was still in the band, songs that would be presumably be on the next album, so I had a taste of what that album could have been had she stayed in the band just a little bit longer.
All of which had me going into the second album, Jackrabbit (you know, the one this is supposedly about), with pretty low expectations. And you know what? It’s pretty good. Obviously the band and male lead Allen Tate are still great, but also it turns out Kaye is actually a good singer (and it probably helps that some of the newer songs were presumably written with her voice in mind rather than Cassidy’s). I really like her performance on songs like “Ladies Mary” and “Philosopher,” and the only one I was disappointed by was “Parasites,” and that only because I’d heard Cassidy’s version. And it’s also possible that change makes me uncomfortable and maybe I judged her too harshly in the first place. But that’s probably not it.
- Love Songs For Robots—Patrick Watson
I kind of have the same problem with this album that I do with Gold Shadows, except it’s even more frustrating, because I like every song on here. I really want to be in the mood for these songs, I just never am. They’re really good, though, I swear. The music is atmospheric, full of moody strings and space-age guitars, all with Watson’s relaxed falsetto drifting in between the notes. It’s a great album. You should listen to it. Really, it’s great.
- Sermon On The Rocks—Josh Ritter
I like to think of Josh Ritter as a folk singer, but the fact is he’s always had roots in country. How far he leans in that direction on a given album isn’t the only factor determining how much I like it (he’s a consistently good songwriter no matter what mode he’s working in), but it is a factor. This album is more in the southern rock gear than full-on country (though it did foreshadow the down-home sound of Gathering), and as long as there’s at least one song packed to the brim with clever lyrics, I’m all good. That being said, it’s not the album I come back to most often.
- Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit—Courtney Barnett
People who say rock is dead clearly aren’t paying attention. I haven’t looked at any best-of-the-decade lists yet, but I assume this album is sitting comfortably on most of them, and though it has the occasional slow moment, it is undeniably a solid 44-minutes of guitar-driven rock goodness.
- Sound & Color—Alabama Shakes
Speaking of rock not being dead, holy crap was this album a pleasant surprise. There were a few songs off of Boys & Girls that I’d liked, but generally it felt like a pretty safe blues rock record. They probably could’ve busted out another one just like it every other year or so and done fine, but they took their time with the follow-up and wow, did that pay off. Much of the difference is in how the album is mixed—where the previous one was like listening to a live jam session from across the room, this puts you right in the middle of the action, making sure every instrument has its own spot to shine. This technique highlights all sorts of sonic goodies, from the lazy, “Something”-esque guitar solo on “Dunes” to the irrepressibly funky bass line in the coda of “Gimme All Your Love,” to whatever they did to that guitar for the last 4 minutes of “Gemini” (and of course Brittany Howard’s untouchable vocals throughout). It’s just a more interesting album, one that rewards repeat listens, and it certainly has been getting those from me.
- Surf—Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment
If this album were just “Slip Slide” repeated 16 times I’d be fine with that. As it is, we’re treated to a wild ride through hip-hop, R&B, and jazz, all with Nico Segal’s trumpet as master of ceremonies. It’s a fun time.
- Tape Loops—Chris Walla
I have literally listened to this on a loop, multiple times. It’s the perfect level of minimalism, not demanding attention but with plenty to notice if you so choose. It’s still my go-to album if I’m settling in for a long writing session. I love this album so much.
Best Holdovers From 2014
- Acid Rap—Chance the Rapper
- And the War Came—Shakey Graves
- Benjamin Booker—Benjamin Booker
- Electric Piano—Nils Frahm
- Get Disowned—Hop Along
- Owl John—Owl John
- Sylvan Esso—Sylvan Esso
Certain of Eventual Failure 